Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1939. ANOTHER ROOSEVELT WARNING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 3, 5 January 1939, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1939. ANOTHER ROOSEVELT WARNING

Moral intervention in the affairs of the outside world is increasingly the policy of the United States Government. It is not yet time to speak of military intervention. Though, according to the cablegrams, even the "diehard isolation-

ists" are silent, isolationism is yet ! a latent force that could thrive" on a too-foyward policy in Washington or on a misjudged speech. Therefore the Washington policy must be described as moral intervention, though whether the supplementing of moral intervention with military intervention will be any more avoidable in 1939-41 than it was in 1915-17 may well be doubted. Between 1915 and 1917 there was a Presidential election, and the same thing happens in 1939-41. The 1932 and 1936 Presidential elections were New Deal elections, but there is ever}' indication that in 1940 the NtvV Deal will be overshadowed by moral intervention, if indeed by that time the moral .intervention has not already become military.

The internal , and the external situations of the United States evidently have been studied by President Roosevelt with the utmost care. It is a long time since his "quarantine" speech directed against lawless nations, but every month since then some new leaf in the book of American foreign policy has been turned, with caution but with persistence. _~ While the American public hear the rustle of the leaves of foreign policy more and more, they hear the leaves of New Deal policy turning less and less. This studied conversion of the domestic vision from an inward outlook to an outward outlook is probably observed more in the totalitarian States than in America herself. It is cabled that one of the reasons for Germany's decision to exercise escalation rights under the naval treaty with Britain is the growing lack of sympathy in the United States for the German viewpoint, and the alleged menacing nature of the United Stafes's huge armament plans. Washington, of course, would not admit the menace;, for Washington's armament policy bears the label of defence. But Americans would not deny "the growing lack of sympathy" with Nazism—if it is possible for a lack to grow.

In terms of moral intervention, tHe President told Congress that his policy was defence. Defence of what? Defence of three institutions "indispensable to Americans" — religion, democracy, international good faith. Affirming that religion is the source of the other two institutions, President Roosevelt in effect based his policy on religion; and we think that that fact in itself is of outstanding importance in these days of apparent irreligion. There;; are many so-called religions, but the j religion of toleration is still a rock on which not only an Archbishop of Canterbury but a President of the United States can build, and from

which defiance can be sounded * to "strident ambition and brute force" —the brute force which reveals itself in pogroms within its fabric as well as in aggressions without. Moral intervention "cannot for ever let pass ... acts of aggression against sister nations, acts which automatically undermine all of us." These words are an emphatic negation of aloofism and isolation. The world has shrunk to lesser distances, and the range of swift weapons is so much greater that isolation has ceased to be.

Then does American democracy aim at military intervention? Not

There are many'methods, short of war but stronger and more effective than mere words, of bringing home to aggressor Governments the aggregate sentiment of our own people. Our neutrality laws . . . may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to a victim of aggression. Our instinct for self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that happen any more. In this passage the President does not define the new methods, but he definitely condemns the present neutrality law, which the antiFranco and anti-Japan newspapers of America have bitterly denounced. With the neutralists in slow retreat, j and with Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. j Cordell Hull advancing with the utmost caution, the.American picture contrasts sharply with the German. Dr. Goebbels would be as horrified if he had to deliver in Germany a Roosevelt type of speech as Americans would be horrified if Mr. Cordell Hull suddenly broke loose and demanded guns before butter. It is obvious that between Nazism and Americanism there is a great gulf fixed, but Americans are dis-

covering that the gulf can be crossed not morally but militarily, hence the", Roosevelt message. Meanwhile, events are moving not only in Congress. . There is intense activity behind the scenes. The American Ambassadorial representations in Rome must be bracketed with Mr. Chamberlain's pending visit to Italy as one more attempt to avert "sensational happenings in the

spring."